Tuesday, August 24, 2021

"The 'Quiet' Month of August"

"The 'Quiet' Month of August"
by Jim Rickards

"Twenty years ago, I wrote a report called "The Myth of August". The idea was to compare what most people thought about the month of August to what actually happens in August. The myth is that August is a quiet month, everyone in the world is on vacation, no deals get done, people just enjoy the beach or mountains or other quiet recreations. This is famously true in France, but it's a French habit that Americans have copied with enthusiasm. When it comes to business and politics, the attitude is, "See you in September."

The reality is quite different. The number of world historical political events or natural catastrophes that have occurred in August could fill an encyclopedia. Let’s consider... On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait. On August 18, 1991, there was an attempted coup d'état against Russian leader Gorbachev. On August 17, 1998, Russia defaulted on its debt and devalued its currency, which led to the collapse of LTCM and a global financial crisis.

On August 23, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans with fury, killing 1,833 and shutting down natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. The list goes on but you get the point.

One of the Worst Disasters in History: In fact, August is notorious for disasters that require all hands on deck, even if the hands are calling in from the Hamptons or Catalina. I was thinking about this in early August and asked myself, "Gee, I wonder what it will be this year?"

Now we know. The fiasco in Afghanistan is one of the worst military and diplomatic setbacks in U.S. history. It's still unfolding and we pray for the Americans and our Afghani friends stuck behind enemy Taliban lines.

But there's more at stake here than just an outpost in Afghanistan. This is a major loss of prestige for the U.S... Our allies from Israel to Taiwan will start to doubt U.S. commitments. NATO is splitting at the seams. And the mental health decline of Joe Biden, which we've been writing about since before his election, is now plain for all to see.

This will not be over soon. It's not a three-day news cycle type event. This is more like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 where the aftermath goes on for years. The results will be mostly negative for U.S. confidence, and will have adverse effects in emerging markets that depend on U.S. security guarantees. But Afghanistan is not the only front that is presenting problems...

What Happened to Energy Independence? The Biden administration swept into office last January with a pile of executive orders on a broad range of subjects. Many were directed at undoing the policies of the Trump administration as quickly as possible. Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, opened the U.S. border with Mexico, emphasized multilateralism over America First and much more. (By the way, these executive orders were not written in haste. Activists keep them "on the shelf" and can trot them out quickly when the opportunity presents. Biden's executive order spree was a rapid response to Democrat control of Washington).

Among these anti-Trump initiatives was a wish list from the Green New Deal crowd. Biden shut down the KeystoneXL pipeline from Canada, banned new oil and natural gas exploration on federal lands, imposed new regulations on the fracking industry, stopped energy exploration in Alaska and much more. He did this at a time when the U.S. had finally achieved energy independence from Middle-Eastern suppliers. Guess what happened next?

The U.S. went into energy deficit and began to import more from OPEC. Domestic prices for gas at the pump rose steeply. Right on cue, OPEC began to cut out put to raise oil prices even higher. Now, Biden is begging OPEC to increase output to lower energy prices and reduce the price of gas at the pump for Americans. Not surprisingly, OPEC is ignoring these calls and is continuing its efforts to increase energy prices.

Of course, none of this would be happening if Biden had just left the U.S. energy industry alone and allowed it to use their technology and exploration capability to continue a U.S. energy surplus consistent with environmental goals.

Referring to Biden's policies, Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) said, "The stupidity behind this couldn't be any greater." That's about right. Gas prices will remain high during the summer driving season to be followed by higher natural gas prices during the winter heating season. You can thank Joe Biden for your higher costs. Here’s more potentially bad news for Democrats...

Finally, the Durham Report: Despite all the storm and stress from 2015 to 2019 about Russian collusion, no actual collusion was ever found. What was found was official wrongdoing, lies, cover-ups, media complicity and a web of efforts to discredit Trump, even though he never did anything wrong. Strangely, there has been almost no accountability about this. There were many investigations, reports and hearings that pointed at the anti-Trump wrongdoing, but almost no one has been held to account. All of that is about to change.

U.S. Attorney John Durham has been leading a criminal investigation of the real collusion behind the fake collusion for the past two years. Most of those who have followed this closely have given up on Durham. The questions, "Where's John Durham?" or "What's John Durham doing?" have become punchlines. Still, based on reliable leaks and other sources, we may be getting close to actual indictments and a detailed report.

Durham's theory of the case is interesting. Instead of focusing on corrupt investigations by the FBI, he's focusing on the false allegations and phony tips that gave rise to the FBI investigation in the first place. This shifts the focus away from James Comey and Andrew McCabe toward less well-known but still powerful figures such as Democrat super-lawyer Marc Elias, Glenn Simpson of research firm Fusion GPS and former Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. While these names may not be familiar as John Brennan and James Comey, any indictments among this group will shake the Democratic power structure to its core.

How long will it be before these political developments have an impact on the market? We may soon have an answer. But it’s time to bury the myth that August is a quiet month."

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal": "The 'Majority' Wanted War, They Were Wrong"

Full screen recommended.
VERY Strong Language Alert!
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal":
"The 'Majority' Wanted War, They Were Wrong"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Related:
Philip Giraldi,  8/24/21:

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Hymn”

Full screen recommended.
Vangelis, “Hymn”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Large, dusty, spiral galaxy NGC 4945 is seen edge-on near the center of this rich telescopic image. The field of view spans nearly 2 degrees, or about 4 times the width of the Full Moon, toward the expansive southern constellation Centaurus.
About 13 million light-years distant, NGC 4945 is almost the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. But X-ray and infrared observations reveal even more high energy emission and star formation in the core of NGC 4945. The other prominent galaxy in the field, NGC 4976, is an elliptical galaxy. Left of center, NGC 4976 is much farther away, at a distance of about 35 million light-years, and not physically associated with NGC 4945.”

"The Only Animal..."

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is
struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be."
- William Hazlitt

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “October”

“October”

"There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave.
A longing wells up in its throat
like a blossom
as it breathes slowly.

What does the world
mean to you if you can’t trust it
to go on shining when you’re
not there? and there’s
a tree, long-fallen; once
the bees flew to it, like a procession
of messengers, and filled it
with honey.

I said to the chickadee, 
singing his heart out in the
green pine tree:
little dazzler
little song,
little mouthful.

The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It
grunts into view. There is no measure
for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes -
there is no telling
the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns
and yawns.
Near the fallen tree
something - a leaf snapped loose
from the branch and fluttering down - tries to pull me
into its trap of attention.
It pulls me
into its trap of attention,
And when I turn again, the bear is gone.

Look, hasn’t my body already felt
like the body of a flower?
Look, I want to love this world
as thought it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.

Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.

One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me - and I thought:
so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful."

- Mary Oliver

"When The Demons Come Along..."

"Here is a universal law: that when it comes to negative and positive, you will always thrive more powerfully in the positive if you have first been immersed in, and have heroically overcome, the polar opposite negative of that thing. To abide in the positive existence of something, without having known and overcome its polar opposite - that is to be only a frame of the real structure. Easily toppled down and taken apart. True power is in the hands of the one who thrives in the positive, after having known and conquered the negative. Because when the demons come along, she will say to those demons: "I know you, I have owned you, but now you bow down to me."
- C. JoyBell C.

“Zachary”

“Zachary”
by Tim Knight

“A handwritten letter arrived in my mailbox last week from a reader. In it was a note from whom I would guess is an elderly gentleman, thanking me for my work both on Slope and on Tastytrade, but politely asking me to use the phrase "God damn it" less frequently, since he found it upsetting. The handwriting on the paper trembled like leaves in an autumn breeze, and it was obvious it took time and effort to send me this two-page missive. It meant something to him.

It never occurred to me that I ever used this phrase in a video, let alone often enough to cause concern. All the same, the letter, as with the many other letters I have received over the years, made an impression. For one thing, it made me wonder how angry I must be in order for this kind of sentiment to seep through, since I wasn't even aware I was saying it.

Which leads me to the topic at hand. Specifically, a man. A terribly deformed man whom I think about almost daily. For now, I'll call him Sup.

One summer evening, a few months ago, I was walking with my family down University Avenue, the central boulevard in our town, and the location of dozens of high-end retail stores that cater to the insatiable appetite of the affluent consumers in my fair city. "Sup?" came from the voice from below. (As is: "What's up?") I glanced around and didn't see the speaker. That is, until I looked lower. There, standing on the brick sidewalk on the corner of Bryant and University Avenues was a person unlike any I had ever seen before.

His head, torso, and arms were normal. There were two things obviously terribly wrong with 1117-suphim: first, his back was completely malformed, with a huge hump, and second, his legs - or what passed for legs - were just a few inches long. He appeared to be mixed race (the politically incorrect term, I think, is "mulatto") and he had a big afro.

"How you guys doin' this evening?", he asked. I stammered that we were pretty good, although I confess being a little surprised. That brief exchange ended the conversation, and my family and I continued on to Umami Burgers for dinner. In the receding distance, I heard this fellow chatting up other people as they passed, asking for a dollar from anyone who would listen.

From that day forward, I paid attention to that corner whenever I passed it in my car or walked by it during my downtown errands. Sup, as I called him, was on that corner more often than not. On occasion, I'd see a special wheelchair near him, which I suppose he could hoist himself onto and roll to wherever it was he lived (if such a place existed). But he was never in it. He was also on the sidewalk at knee level.

What struck me about Sup the most was his attitude. This guy was seriously and, dare I say, grotesquely deformed. When he moved from one place to another, he typically did so by pressing his hands against the ground and swinging his torso and tiny legs forward, much like an ape at the zoo. Although his short stature made him easy to miss, once people saw him, they couldn't help but take note. I can only imagine the range of reactions he's ever received.

But back to his attitude: this guy was relentlessly positive. And I don't mean grinning, giggling, and thumbs-up positive. I'm talking about a self-evident confidence, determination, and cachet. He gave salutations to everyone who passed; he casually smoked on a cigarette while chatting up people who would talk to him; and he made verbal passes at good-looking women as they strolled by (enjoying, incidentally, a supremely good view of their legs from his two-foot high vantage point). In spite of all this, most people tried their best to ignore him. They just felt too awkward (as if they were the ones who were entitled to feel uneasy).

Since I'm an unrelentingly self-referential twit, I pondered these observations in the context of my own behavior. Here was this guy who had every reason to feel sorry for himself. His tremendous physical deformities were going to dominate whatever impression he might possibly give to someone. He was begging on a street corner for dollar bills. He was being passed every day by countless numbers of people, many of them affluent, some of them stinking rich, while he begged for a little money to eat. And yet he was totally unfazed (in spite of, I wager, some cruel reactions or mean utterances offered by heartless strangers).

I, on the other hand, have a PhD in self-pity. I'm a white American male - by definition, a privileged class - who has a perfectly good body, good health, a zillion dollar house, and enough money to live the rest of my life without working another day. I've got a beautiful wife, magnificent children, and a good income that doesn't rob me of any personal freedom. And yet I am seized on a virtually daily basis with how miserable and rotten my life is, and how I don't deserve any of the bad things that have ever happened to me. I dare feel sorry for myself due to solvable personal problems or the fact the stupid stock market refuses to fall.

Sure, if I cornered you and shared a couple of drinks, I could probably conjure up enough tales-of-woe to get you to agree that, yeah, poor Tim is a pathetic sumbitch, and it's no wonder he's often tempted to jump in front of the next CalTrain that passes by. Indeed, most people on this planet would be able to surgically extract some sliver of their lives and make it seem sad. Hell, Elon Musk could surely give grisly tales from his multiple failed marriages, although I imagine it would be a Herculean feat for anyone to actually conjure up sympathy for the guy.

Sup, in sharp contrast to this morose malaise, was just plain cool. On more than one occasion, I'd see that he had managed to coax a couple of women - attractive young women - over to talk to him, and he was just smoking his cig, chatting them up, casual as could be. I don't know what he said to get their attention, but whatever it was, it worked. God knows the guy has chatted up more good-looking women than I ever have in my own life. That's me in the corner.

I've long been tempted to interview the guy, because there's so much I want to know about him. Where is he from? What's his background? What's his physical malady all about? What are the most interesting, kind, and nasty things people have said to him? What are some interesting stories from the many months he's been hanging out at this particular corner? What does he hope the future brings to him? How does he manage to stay so upbeat?

I haven't done the interview yet, and I'm not sure if I ever will. I mean, it takes a certain amount of gumption to start quizzing a guy up and down; he might react poorly to the whole thing. But I've got a suspicion he would be all too glad to tell his story. I'm more worried about my ability to do the interview than his interest in answering my questions.

However, I took one baby step in that direction a few days ago. I was walking by, and as usual, he tosses out - "Sup, man? Got a dollar for me?" I was on my way to my mailbox, so I replied, "In a minute." I suppose he gets this kind of brush-off all the time, but I was sincere. I was going to come back with a dollar in a minute, because there was something I wanted to buy with it.

"Yo, yo!" he said as I returned to the corner. I handed him a dollar and asked, "What's your name?" In my mind, the question was "What's your real name?", since I had known him as "Sup" all these months.

"Zachary."
"OK, have a good night." And I left.

So now at least I had a real name for this person. That was a more dignified, after all, since I had heretofore attached a goofy moniker to him. But I really need to interview this guy one of these days. In a way, I admire him, even though his disposition and attitude just make me loathe myself even worse than before. I mean, seriously, what right do I have?

So be it. Zachary is one tough hombre. Respect.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation.
Thanks for stopping by!

"Sometimes..."

"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"The Wisdom to Shirk"

"The Wisdom to Shirk"
by Bill Bonner

"Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
– American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "This week, we’re all getting on the same page… and the same chapter. Yesterday, we gave you what we think will be the pattern of the crisis ahead: (Fake) Boom… Bust… Re-Boom… Ka-Boom… Kabul. And today… we make sure we’re all reading the same book!

Here’s a letter from a non-fan, clearly not even in the library. Dear reader Nancy M. quotes a line from our Diary last week: “The Taliban are NOT feminists! They think there are two types of human – men and women – and that they are meant to play different roles.” She then comments: "Really? So it sits okay with you that their idea of what type of (sub)human women are is they are to be covered head to toe, not be educated, can’t go out without a male, not make any noise lest they awaken lust in a man, and if they try and rebel against this tyranny they are to be beaten and/or whipped? That’s quite the different role they’re to play, huh?!"

Nancy seems to believe that we (including she) know how the Taliban treat women in Afghanistan… that we (including she) know how women should be treated… and that anyone cares what we think.

Live and Let Live: But that was the whole point. No… No… And no… Everyone believes his own values, right now, are eternal and universal. Of course, they are not. Not even those of America’s elite, circa 2021. Things change – even our own thoughts and beliefs.

Besides, it’s the winners of wars who get to decide. They impose their values – as lame and repulsive as they may be. America lost the war in Afghanistan. Its values (if it has any) lost, too. Is that alright with us? Well, yes… God has given us the strength not to give a damn about a great many things. And if we were running U.S. foreign policy, we’d put a sign on the door: We don’t try to tell other people what to do; we expect the same favor from them.

The Way It Is: Continuing to mine this deep, philosophical vein, let’s look at the basics of economics and finance. Actions have consequences… Are we all agreed on that? And how about this: You can’t get something from nothing? Ex nihilo nihil fit. Everything requires some input. You have to do something to get something. Every investment produces a return – either positive or negative. Every action comes with a reaction.

So, let’s go further. Say’s Law – named after French economist Jean-Baptiste Say – tells us how you get wealthy. It’s a consequence… a reaction… to your own actions. You get by giving. You buy products and services by providing products and services to others, said Say. (Of course, an individual could also rob a bank… or get a stimmy check. We’re referring here to general rules that apply to societies and economies.)

How do you provide goods and services? You work. You put in time, energy, and resources. Even then, there’s no guarantee. If you dig a well, you have to find water. Otherwise, you’ve wasted your time. If you start a business, it has to make a profit… or you are not really increasing the net supply of wealth. If it loses money, it means you are actually making the world a poorer place.

In an honest economy, mistakes are constantly weeded out. It is the process of what Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction”… the past must die to make room for the future! Yes, Dear Reader, there are some things we just have to accept. So, let us gird our loins to fight the good fight… and say our prayers, that we may be lucky enough to win… ’cause that’s just the way it is.

Bloodsuckers: That’s why American economist Ken Rogoff was so wrong, writing in the Financial Times last month. He lauded the authorities – the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve – for reacting “so quickly and proactively” to the COVID-19 crisis last year. As a result, “there were actually fewer corporate bankruptcies in 2020 than in 2019.” What this really means is that mistakes weren’t corrected… and the zombies multiplied. America’s money-losing, wealth-destroying enterprises continued to suck blood out of the economy, in other words. Keeping them alive was a mistake.

Some things you can change. Some things you can’t. Say’s Law and Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction are ones you can’t. No tricks… no magic… no Ph.D. theories can get around them.

Wisdom to Know the Difference: But wait… “Can’t we at least help people in crisis periods?” “Can’t we just use a little planning, at the top, to prevent corrections and make the economy run more smoothly?” “Can’t wise people in government intervene to change the things they can change – making sure the economy is running at 100% capacity… with full employment?” “Or how about a little stimulus from time to time… and liquidity for those who need it?”

“And… and… what about realizing our world improvement goals – less carbon output… equality… defeating the coronavirus… and providing high-quality broadband to poor people all over the planet?”

Surely we can accomplish some of those goals, no? Yes… and no. Some things you can change. Some things you can’t. Tune in tomorrow for more about which is which…"

"It Must Be Very Difficult..."

"It must be very difficult to be someone 
who has less intelligence than a pigeon."
- Darwin Award @AwardsDarwin

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 8/24/21"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/24/21:
"Yet Another Wall Street Bank WARNS Of A Stock Market Drop"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/24/21:
"Now Is The Time For Action"


"How It Really Is"

 
The only thing these clowns aren't incompetent about...

"We Are Witnessing Incompetence On A Colossal Scale Throughout Our Society"

"We Are Witnessing Incompetence On 
A Colossal Scale Throughout Our Society"
by Michael Snyder

"These days, it is a surprise when someone actually does something competently. It is often said that if you want something done right you have got to do it yourself, and today that is more true than ever. Just think about it. How often have you had a delivery delayed or messed up? How often have you had someone supposedly “fix” something but it isn’t actually fixed? How often have you purchased something that breaks shortly thereafter? And don’t even get me started on the complete and utter incompetence that we see in the tech industry. How hard could it possibly be to release a piece of software that is not riddled with all sorts of nightmarish bugs that need to be “patched” as soon as possible?

Sadly, in our upside down society some of the most incompetent people that you can imagine end up running entire organizations, and if you are particularly corrupt and useless you may get to be a politician.

By now, you are probably thinking that I am going to talk about Joe Biden in this article, and you are right. In this era of extreme incompetence, it somehow seems appropriate that sleepy Joe is presiding over our “idiocracy”. Barack Obama knew that this could happen. According to Politico, he once said that nobody should “underestimate Joe’s ability to **** things up”.

Everything that Biden touches seems to turn into a failure. Just look at the crisis on the border. It is the worst that it has ever been in our entire history, and we are being told that “morale is in the toilet” among our Border Patrol agents… “Morale is in the toilet,” Jon Anfinsen, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s union, told the Washington Examiner. “Morale is low because agents aren’t allowed to do their job - if our job is to be out patrolling the border in between the ports of entry and actively searching for people who have crossed illegally, but we’re not allowed to go do that job, it basically creates this defeated feeling in everyone.”

Thanks to Biden’s wonderful new policies, our Border Patrol agents have their hands tied and are not able to do their jobs, and as a result many of them show up to work “sort of downtrodden, almost dead inside”… “Everyone shows up to work sort of downtrodden, almost dead inside, for lack of a better term,” Anfinsen stated. “They’re not allowed to [do] the job, and they know that people are getting away every single day, every hour.”

Of course it isn’t just on the border where Biden is completely and utterly failing. He is doing such a “great job” with the economy that the term “Bidenflation” has been coined less than a year into his presidency. And his response to the COVID pandemic has been a nightmare of historic proportions. If I were to tell you how I really feel about the decisions that he has been making during this pandemic, I would get censored into oblivion by the social media companies.

Right now, what everyone is talking about is how incompetent the Biden administration has been in handling the situation in Afghanistan. The fall of Saigon in 1975 and the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration both made America look really weak, but we have never seen anything like the debacle at the airport in Kabul. The “terrorists” that we went it to destroy in 2001 now have us surrounded and cornered in half an airport, and there are still countless numbers of people that can’t get to the evacuation planes.

In fact, staff members that worked at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul feel like they have been completely betrayed by our government at this point… "Local staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul are “deeply disheartened” by U.S. evacuation efforts and have expressed a sense of betrayal and distrust in the U.S. government, according to a State Department diplomatic cable obtained by NBC News.

The cable, which was sent Saturday, said memos were sent Wednesday inviting Afghan staff members at the embassy to head to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. It told them to take food and to prepare for difficult conditions."

When staffers went to the airport in response to that cable, they quickly found themselves in the middle of a nightmare… "Staffers reported being jostled, hit, spat on and cursed at by Taliban fighters at checkpoints near the airport, it said, adding that criminals were taking advantage of the chaos while the U.S. military tried to maintain order “in an extremely physical situation.” Some staff members reported that they were almost separated from their children, while others collapsed in a crush of people and had to be taken to hospitals with injuries, the cable said. Others said they had collapsed on the road because of heat exhaustion, it said."

British forces have been leaving the airport and bringing back people that need to be evacuated, but for some reason the U.S. hasn’t done the same thing. There are still thousands of Americans inside the country, and time is running out, because the Taliban won’t move the August 31 deadline… "The White House repeatedly refused to address the Taliban’s August 31 deadline to get US troops out of Afghanistan on Monday, dodging questions on the subject and snapping at reporters who asked how the government planned to save the remaining Americans stuck in Kabul.

The Taliban’s spokesman issued the sternest threat yet to Biden on Monday morning, saying there will be ‘consequences’ if US troops – who are holed up at the airport in Kabul evacuating tens of thousands of people and fending off an increasingly desperate crowd – don’t leave in the next eight days."

Biden should immediately resign, but he will never do that. Of course there are others that also should share in the blame. Just like much of the rest of our society, the brass at the Pentagon has been getting increasingly incompetent over the years, but up until recently it hasn’t been talked about too much. But now that our failures in Afghanistan have been exposed for the whole world to see, the mainstream media is having a field day mocking them. For example, the following comes from the New York Post

"To the surprise of only the Biden administration and its top brass, the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan last week after 20 years of frivolous American adventurism. It was a spectacular failure of American diplomacy, statecraft, intelligence and, most of all, military capability. In short, mission very much not accomplished. But that’s pretty much standard operating procedure for the nearly useless behemoth called the Pentagon, which hasn’t won a war since the kinder, gentler American government changed its name from the War Department to the Defense Department shortly after World War II."

So why don’t any of our top military officials ever get fired? As Darren Beattie has pointed out, NFL head coaches are held to a much higher standard than our generals and admirals are… "Is the head coach always the problem with a bad NFL team? Obviously not. But a head coach is the highly-compensated captain of a $200 million operation, and his job is to win. Coaches who don’t win get fired, because being a perpetual, complacent loser is unacceptable."

The ongoing collapse of the U.S.-backed regime in Afghanistan is the geopolitical equivalent of an NFL team going 0-16 twenty seasons in a row. Perhaps it’s worse than that, in fact. The Afghanistan disaster is the equivalent of an NFL All-Pro team taking on a Division III liberal arts college, being shut out, and then crashing the team bus into a ditch.

If we were to start holding military officials accountable for their performance, firing Mark Milley would be a really good start. I have absolutely no idea how someone like that got to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Personally, I would not even trust him to mop the floors of the local Dairy Queen. What is even more tragic is that millions upon millions of Americans unquestionably accept whatever our incompetent leaders tell them to believe without taking the time and effort to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions. The blind are truly leading the blind, and we are steamrolling down a highway that doesn’t lead anywhere good.

Every great society throughout history has crumbled eventually, and now our society is crumbling too. I suppose that it was probably inevitable, but do we really have to look so completely and utterly incompetent in the process?"

"Despair in the Empire of Graveyards"

Saigon, 1975
"Despair in the Empire of Graveyards"
Or Gilbert and Sullivan Come to Afghanistan, 
Depending on Your Perspective
by Fred Reed

"Forty-six years ago in a previous comedy I was in Saigon, recently having been evacuated from Phnom Penh in an Air America - CIA - Caribou carrying, in addition to me, several ARVN junior officers and perhaps a dozen BUFEs (Big Ugly F***ing Elephants, the ceramic pachyderms much beloved of GIs). America had already embarked on its currently standard policy of forcing small countries into wars and then leaving them in the lurch. In Cambodia this led to the reign of Pol Pot, the ghastly torture operation at Toul Sleng, and a million or so dead. In the unending fight for democracy, casualties are inevitable.

At the time Saigon was tense because Ban Me Thuot had fallen and the NVA roared down Route One toward Saigon. To anyone with the brains of a doorknob, the American adventure in Vietnam was coming to an end, but the embassy was studiedly unconcerned. Embassies do not have the brains of a doorknob, but are keenly aware of public relations. Acknowledging the inescapable is not their way. As usual, Washington would rather lie than breathe, and did. As in Cambodia, so in Nam, and so later in Afghanistan.

Apparently a genius at State realized that a lot of gringo expats lived in Nam - the number six thousand comes to mind, but may be wrong - and that six thousand hostages taken when Saigon fell would be bad PR. So the embassy in Kabul - Saigon, I meant to say, Saigon -quietly announced that expats could fly out on military aircraft from Ton Son Nhut. They didn’t, or at least many didn’t. The NVA continued its rush toward Saigon.

The expats didn’t fly out because they had Vietnamese wives and families and were not going to leave them, period. These wives may not have had the trappings of pieces of paper and stamps and maybe snippets of ribbon. These things do not seem important in Asian war zones. But the expats regarded them as wives. Period. The family went, or nobody did. Period.

The embassy didn’t understand this because embassies are staffed by people from Princeton with names like Derek who wear pink shirts and don’t know where they are. The ambassador is usually a political appointee being rewarded for campaign contributions and probably doesn’t speak the language as few gringos spikka da Pushto or Vietnamese or Farsi or Khmer. For example, nobody at all in the embassy in Cambodia spoke Khmer. The rank and file of State are better suited to a high-end Rotarian barbecue than a Third World city teeming with strange people in funny clothes eating God knows what horrible things in winding frightening alleys. And so the State people could not understand why an American would marry one “of them,” as in the embassy I once heard a gringa put it. It was a good question. Why would a man marry a pretty, sleek, smart, self-reliant woman who wanted family and children? It was a great mystery.

The Taliban - NVA, I mean - NVA kept coming closer. A PR disaster loomed. Meanwhile the PR apparatus insisted that the sky wasn’t really falling even as it did and no, no, no the US had not gotten its sit-down royally kicked by a ratpack of rice-propelled paddy maggots, as GIs described the opposition. Many in government seemed to believe this. This was an early instance, to be repeated in another part of Asia, of inventing a fairyland world and then trying to move into it.

Finally State faced reality, a novel concept. It allowed quietly that expats and their families could fly out, military. It was getting late, but better than nothing.

The comedic value of this goat rope grew, becoming more amusing by the hour. I was trying to get a young Vietnamese woman out as she had worked for the embassy and we suspected things might not go well with her under the NVA. Call her Linda. Linda and I took the bus to Tan Son Nhut. The Viet gate guards gave her a hard time, envying her for getting out while they could not, but we got in. I was going to tell the State people that we were married but that while I was in Can Tho, by then in VC hands, see, the marriage papers had slipped from my carrying case. This was obvious bullshit, but I guessed that if I made a huge issue of it they would bend rather than get in a megillah with a reporter, no matter how unimportant.

We found ourselves in a long line of expats with their families leading to the door of a Quonset hut, inside of which a State official was checking papers. Some of the expats had around them what appeared to be small villages of in-laws, brothers of wives, sisters, everything but the family dog. An official with a bull horn told us to write down all their names and the relationships on clipboards being passed around. Tran Thi Tuyet Lan, sister, for example.

Then a genius at the embassy or Foggy Bottom realized that something resembling a third of Viet Nam was about to come out, listed as in-laws. Policy changed, at least in Washington which was as usual blankly ignorant of reality on the ground. At Tan Son Nhut this meant telling men that they had to leave parts of their families behind, which they weren’t going to do. This would not look good above the fold in the Washington Post. Dozens of Americans taken captive because the State Department "would not let their families out.” All was confusion because the US had spent years telling itself that the disaster couldn’t happen. What to do?

American ingenuity kicked in. At the Quonset hut the guy with the bullhorn announced, “From now on, all mothers-in-law are mothers, all brothers-in-law are brothers. Change your forms.” All along the line, magic markers went through “in-law.” This meant that some women had two mothers, but this under the circumstances seemed a minor biological quibble. The guy with the bull horn was at most three feet from the guy in the Quonset hut who was certifying papers as valid. He solemnly looked at the papers with their strike-through’s, certified them as correct, and that was that. A field expedient.

Hours and hours went by. Night came. Tempers frayed. Nobody seemed to have planned how actually to get these people out. Nobody seemed to have planned anything. Finally a 130 howled in. This was the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, a four-engine turboprop cargo bird and a magnificent plane. It taxied over. The engines did not shut down. The prop wash was strong and hot. The tail ramp dropped. The waiting mob were rushed aboard without ceremony. There were no seats in the dark cavern of the fuselage. That would have required planning, which no one in Washington had thought of. The air reeked of burned aviation kerosene. We squatted on the cargo deck while an Air Force guy with a bullhorn warned, “Keep the kids’ hands out of the expansion slots, you’ll lose them.”

The real-world Air Force didn’t have people named Derek in pink shirts and if you told it all rules off, get the job done, it did. Ramp up, fast taxi, takeoff run, tight corkscrewing climb with the engines running at power I didn’t know they had. The NVA and VC were now very close due to incompetent planning (have I mentioned incompetent planning?) and might have SAM-7s so it wasn’t a good idea to fly over territory they now controlled. Cutting and running from a stupid war run by generals as clueless as they were careerist, with Saigon spinning below, seen through open doors amid tightly packed peasants going they had little idea where. Days later when we got to San Fran on a chartered airliner, hundreds of refugees were dumped into the main concourse, no immigrations, customs, or paperwork.

And now we have done it all over again in Kabul, complete with helicopters over the embassy and a panicked evacuation undertaken way too late and sudden concern for turncoat Afghans who made the mistake of working for the US. There is talk of importing 20,000 Afghan refugees to America. I find it amusing that many conservatives, who thought the war was peaches because it was about democracy and niceness and American values, now object to importing people their dimwitted enthusiasms put in line to be killed. Use and discard. Countries and people.

There was the now-traditional underestimation of the speed of the insurgent advance, the predictable deprecation of the “good” Afghans for not fighting with sufficient enthusiasm for the Empire: If they didn’t care enough to defend their country, Biden would say with earnest cluelessness, what could we do?”

So why did this happen? Why another rush to the exit as the world laughs? Which the world is doing. In a sentence, because if you do something stupid and it doesn’t work, it probably won’t work when you do it again.

The psychological explanation is slightly more complex. Vietnam is a good example. America invaded a country of another race, utterly different culture, practicing religions GIs had never heard of, speaking a language virtually no Americans spoke, a country exceedingly sick of being invaded by foreigners, most of them white. in Afghanistan the designated evil was terrorism, in in Viet Nam communism, but the choice of evils doesn’t matter. You have to tell the rubes at home something noble sounding.

Then the Americans did as they always do, training the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, to fight the communists to impose democracy, which the Viets had not asked them to do. But when you ask some Viets (Bodes, Laos, Iraqis, Afghans) to fight other Viets (Bodes, etc.) to kill their own people for the benefit of the invaders, they are not greatly charmed. With a predictability that makes sunrise seem chancy, they desert, fight lackadaisically, with officers charging the US pay for soldiers who do not exist, and probably go over to the other side en masse when the collapse comes. Which latter the Afghan army just did. Duh, as the kids say.

The speed of the Taliban advance took Americans by surprise because officers are liars and had been hiding the deplorable state of the “Afghan” army, its numbers, morale, degree of training, and phenomenal rates of desertion. Often the American officer corps thinks that if it can just have a little more time, they can win, so lying is a part of the war effort. Biden bought into this, announcing that the Afghan army vastly outnumbered the Taliban and was better armed and trained and the insurgents couldn’t possibly do what they proceeded to do.

Another reason is that the American style of war recruits its enemies. Soldiers are not the Boy Scout defenders of civilization that so many like to imagine. They kill a lot of civilians, many tens of thousands in the bombing of cities such as Baghdad and Hanoi. Ground troops come to detest the natives whom they designate gooks, zipperheads, sand ni**ers, camel jockeys, and the like. They commit war crimes that, when discovered, are called “isolated incidents,” when in fact they are common.

Fragmentation bombs produce such things as a little girl crying with her belly torn open and intestines falling out while her mother goes stark raving bugf**k mad watching her daughter bleed to death and she can do nothing about it. But it is for democracy and American values, and anyway the ragheads breed like flies, and besides, CNN won’t air it. Today drone strikes hit weddings and other gatherings. When you kill people in a village, the young men join the insurgents, wanting revenge. When a few thousands were killed in Nine-Eleven, Americans exploded in rage. Three thousand is a small fraction of the numbers killed in, say, the attack on Baghdad. The Iraqi soldiers killed in a hopeless attempt to defeat the Americans were sons, fathers, husbands, brothers of other Iraqis. How much love do we think it engendered in Iraqis? This seems not to occur to Washington.

Militaries at bottom are amoral. Afghans know of the torture operations at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Americans seem to dismiss such things as minor. They are not. Afghans seeing Moslems lying in pools of blood at Abu Ghraib, or being paraded around naked in hoods, are going to want to kill someone. Guess who.

American wars last a long time because no one has an incentive to end them. American casualties are low, especially now with the killing mostly done from the air against peasants with no defenses. No important American ever gets killed. American wars are all class wars, with the dying being done by blue-collar suckers from Kansas or the deep South, not by Bush II, Hillary, the other Clinton, Bolton, Bannon, Obama, Blinken, Biden, Cheney, Kamala, Trump, and the rest of those not required to fight. The US public has little idea of what goes on in its wars because the corporate media hide them. the Pentagon having learned that the media are their worst enemy, not the Taliban. It would not surprise me if one unfettered camera crew, filming the corpses and mutilated children and devastation, could force an end to such a war.

Americans are not heartless but calculatedly uninformed. Wars are also extremely profitable for those who provide the bombs, fuel, vehicles, and so on. If the US loses a war, the contracts stop, and equally if it wins. Keeping it going for decades provides a steady revenue stream. What’s not to like?

Finally, or as much as I am going to worry about, there is the 1955 Syndrome, the engrained belief that America is all powerful. This is arrogance and self-delusion. In the Pentagon you encounter a mandatory can-do attitude a belief that the US military is indomitable, the best trained, armed, and led force in this or any nearby galaxy. In one sense this is necessary: You can’t tell the Marines that they are mediocre light infantry or sailors that their aircraft are rapidly obsolescing, their ships sitting ducks in a changing military world, and that the whole military enterprise is rotted by social engineering, profiteering, and careerism.

But look around: The US has failed to intimidate North Korea, chase the Chinese out of its islands in the South China Sea, retrieve the Crimea from Russia, can’t intimidate Iran, just got run out of Afghanistan, remains mired in Iraq and Syria, failed to block Nordstream II despite a desperate effort, and couldn’t keep Turkey from buying the S-400. The Pentagon plans for the wars it wants to fight, not the wars it does fight. The most dangerous weapons of the modern world are not nukes, but the Ak-47, the RPG, and the IED. Figure it out.

And now the US comes home, leaving Afghanistan in ruins for decades. Use and discard."
Related:
A US military helicopter flying above the 
US embassy in Kabul on August 15, 2021.

Monday, August 23, 2021

"US Now Bankrupt; Avoid Being A Debit Slave As Inflation War Will Crush The Economy"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/23/21:
"US Now Bankrupt; Avoid Being A Debit Slave 
As Inflation War Will Crush The Economy"

Musical Interlude: Logos, “Cheminement”

Full screen recommended.
Logos, “Cheminement”

"A Look to the Deep Heavens"

Full screen recommended.
"The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D"

"The Most Precious Gift..."

“Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.”
- Walter Anderson

Chet Raymo, "Why We Need Poets"

"Why We Need Poets"
by Chet Raymo

"The poet Jane Hirshfield referred in a poem to the number of atoms it takes to make a butterfly. Ten to the 24th power, I think she said. I thought I'd check it out. A typical butterfly might weigh about half a gram. The exact ratio of elements I don't know, but mostly hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Let's assume an atomic weight of ten for a typical atom; that is, an atom with ten nuclear particles (Hydrogen=1, carbon= 12, oxygen=16, and so on). A proton or neutron has a weight of about 1.6 X 10-24 grams. About 3 X 1022 atoms in a butterfly.

If I'm remembering Hirshfield's reference correctly (and I may not be), we are off by one or two orders of magnitude. No matter. It's a very big number. You want to make a butterfly? You will need 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. And every one in exactly the right place.

Now consider the miracle of metamorphosis. The caterpillar builds a chrysalis. Wraps itself up in its closet. And there, in the privacy of its self-sufficiency, it rearranges those arrangements of atoms. The caterpillar's six stumpy front feet are turned into the butterfly's slender legs. Four wings develop, as do reproductive organs. Chewing mouthparts become adapted for sucking. A crawling, insatiable, leaf-eater is transformed into a winged, sex-obsessed nectar sipper.

This is why we need poets. It's one thing to count atoms, or draw diagrams of the 22 amino acids, or suss out their sequence on the long chains that are the proteins. Or read out the genome that controls the machinery that turns a creeping leaf-cruncher into a winged angel. But all that biochemistry, as wonderful as it is, leaves the essential mystery intact. The hum. The unceasing hum that is life. The inextinguishable continuity. Sing, poets. Sing your hosannas."

"Each Of Us..."

“Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless -
each of us with his or her right upon the earth;
Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth;
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.”
- Walt Whitman
○○
"We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars... everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."
- Thornton Wilder

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "I Worried"

"The Shortages Are Going To Get Worse Later This Year As Global Supply Chains Increasingly Falter"

Full screen recommended.
"The Shortages Are Going To Get Worse Later 
This Year As Global Supply Chains Increasingly Falter"
by Epic Economist

"Have you already started to notice that store shelves are getting increasingly emptier? Have you realized that some basic items have become impossible to find? If so, you're definitely not alone. All across America, consumers are having to deal with shortages of food staples and a series of other everyday items as the supply chains crisis is only getting worse. At this point, it seems that we can only hope for things not to escalate any further, otherwise, we might see people fighting over a can of beans and a pack of toilet paper just as we seen during the waves of panic-buying last year.

But, sadly, the truth is that global supply chains are now under more strain than ever before, and industry executives have been warning in recent days that consumers haven't yet seen the worst of this crisis. In the coming holiday season, things may get much more complicated. Even though people are trying to keep a positive mindset that things will eventually get better, many events are unfolding all over the world right now that are likely to dramatically aggravate supply chain problems, and result in shipping delays and even more shortages.

At this point, several local news outlets are already reporting massive shortages in their local areas, although the mainstream media hasn't covered the national shortages that are happening everywhere in the country just yet. Whether they are trying not to spread panic and unleash a panic-buying frenzy again or they are deliberately choosing not to tell people the truth, the reality is that many people can’t find some of their favorite and essential items since the health crisis started.

All across the country, the shortage of workers is making it harder for retailers to unload containers, transport their products and restock their shelves so that customers can find what they want and need. Therefore, there's no end in sight for the current shortages, particularly because the Delta variant has been spreading across Asian ports, which are key to global trade. In China, after one worker was detected with the virus, authorities decided to shut down one of the busiest port terminals in the entire world “indefinitely”.

Meanwhile, another major factor supply chains are having to deal with is a historic global shipping container shortage. The demand for shipping containers is outstripping the supply by such a great scale that global shipping container rates soared to levels we have never seen before. In the US, companies are paying up to $32,000 for a single container coming from China. And once those containers arrive on our coast and get delivered at ports, there aren’t enough port workers to unload them all. For that reason, it's been taking months for products that are made in China to get to our stores. And some of them may never arrive at all. That's the case of any product that might contain a computer chip.

Now that the holiday season is right at the corner, due to the series of supply chain bottlenecks, many in the retail industry are anticipating complete and utter chaos. In a recent study conducted by Reuters, nearly a dozen suppliers and retailers of everything from toys to computer equipment in the United States and Europe were surveyed. They found that all of the companies expect "weeks-long delays in holiday inventory due to shipping bottlenecks, including a global container shortage and the recent outbreak-related closure of the southern Chinese port of Yantian, which serves manufacturers near Shenzhen".

Even if nothing else goes wrong, it could take years for supply chains to normalize, and considering how fast things are changing, another devastating crisis can suddenly erupt and take us back to square one. As inventory levels continue to go down, prices are going up to compensate. However, several economists are becoming increasingly more alarmed as the price hikes have hit food staples all over the world.

Unrest is something that always follows when acute food price hikes happen, and in face of the growing social tensions we've been witnessing all over the globe, this sustained increase in prices for basic staples is making some governments extremely nervous, including America's. Despite insisting that all of this will be "transitory", consumers have started to realize that our leaders' concept of "transitory" is actually translated into years of high inflation and economic pain for millions of people. When the masses become aware of the fact that most politicians in Washington and policymakers with the Federal Reserve don't seem to know what they're doing, this country will start to see some definitive changes."

The Daily "Near You?"

Blue River, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Final Blowout Sale"

"The Final Blowout Sale"
by Jeff Thomas

"Increasingly, both Europeans and North Americans whom I meet are expressing their concern that the social structure of their countries appears to be breaking down. Americans and Canadians speak of people of who, for making an off-handed comment that could possibly be interpreted as racist, can lose their livelihoods as a result. In the UK, it’s worse, with people being sentenced to prison for publicly denouncing rapes of children by Muslims in UK cities.

In the US, some universities now have "non-white-only" days, when Caucasian students and faculty are banned from school grounds. (Those who do attend have at times been harassed, threatened and even physically attacked in the new racist anti-white trend.)

The quest for illogical "diversity" is arising in a host of surprising contexts. For example, in applications for air traffic control positions, applicants are given five times more points for seemingly irrelevant "qualifications," such as "having played team sports in high school" or for "having been unemployed for more than three years," than for being pilots. This, in spite of the fact that air traffic control is not about diversity, it’s about knowing how to get planes full of people to land safely.

A teenager who is caught smoking marijuana can be jailed for it, but, worse, under Civil Asset Forfeiture, if he brings marijuana home, his family can have their house, cars and bank accounts confiscated under the suspicion that they "may" be drug traffickers. However, bankers, who embezzle hundreds of millions, simply pay a fine, which is then charged to shareholders.

As one American said to me recently, "It’s as though everything I was taught about truth, reason and morality as a child has been turned upside down." And that’s exactly right.

Historically, whenever an empire is in decline, as it reaches the latter stages, truth, reason and morality become casualties. As government leaders come to realize that the damage that they’ve visited upon their countries has gone way too far and that a collapse will occur, they make a last-ditch effort to keep the game going a little longer – to milk the system for a final year or two.

Concurrently, some people begin to twig onto the fact that the government itself is the problem and they begin to seek accountability. At such a time, the only tool a government has is to attempt to re-invent truth – to feed the media with a false narrative in order to wipe out their own tracks. And the closer a nation is to the crisis stage, the more re-invention is necessary, until virtually all information is patently false.

Reason: In order for false information to be effective, reason must also be broken down. Any existing perceptions are to be turned on their heads. Those who were previously perceived as the contributors and creators are vilified as evil. Those who have previously been regarded as ne’er-do-wells are presented as victims and even heroes.

Morals: And, as truth and reason are decimated, any population begins to lose focus on its inherent morality. Even the most basic moral concepts, such as, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," become abandoned, since, in a world where truth and reason are becoming corrupted, a people will begin to understand that their sense of personal responsibility and their sense of humanity are no longer attributes, but liabilities. At best, these traits may diminish a citizen’s well-being and, at worst, he can be ostracized or even jailed for defending moral principles that have been discarded.

But, it should be said, that this is nothing new. In Rome, in the fourth century, in Spain in the sixteenth century, and, in fact, whenever an empire has begun the latter stages of decline, the deterioration listed above has taken place. The pattern is always the same.

This brings to mind a lesson I learned in my youth. I’d been sent to a private school in the city. On the main shopping street there was a very large department store (In the UK, think: Marks & Spencer; in the US, think: Macy’s). Periodically, there would be sales on goods. But, once a year, a Final Closeout Sale would be held. Prices were far lower than the cost to manufacture the goods and this would be the one and only time in the year when extreme bargains were to be had.

The sale was always held in the basement, which was devoid of the attractive displays upstairs. Instead, plain steel clothing racks and bare wooden bins held the clothing that would be on sale.

On the day of the sale, the doors would be opened and a flood of women would rush into the store and hurry down the stairs. Women would seek out the racks and bins where clothing their size had been displayed. In a very short time, clothing was torn from racks. The cellophane was torn from the Items in the bins and the women tried to grab as many items as would fit them. Amazingly, many of them took off their outer clothing and went from rack to bin in their underwear, trying on clothing.

At times, the competition for acquisition became somewhat frenzied and women would physically fight over a garment, sometimes tearing it to pieces. By day’s end, the clothing that hadn’t been bought was strewn everywhere and the floor was covered in garments that had been trampled.

At the time, such behavior by individuals was anathema to me and I attempted to understand why (otherwise normal) people would, as a group, abandon their sense of personal responsibility to others and their sense of humanity. Clearly, the very notion that the event represented a "last chance" of some sort was sufficient to cause, at least a portion of the population, to discard all responsibility.

And, of course, the same is true for nations. Throughout history, whenever an empire has entered its decline, the people, whether they understand the events or not, feel in their gut that a "Final Closeout Sale" is coming and their traditional values often fall by the wayside. In the jurisdictions mentioned above, if we can go by voting, roughly half of each population not only tolerates the loss of truth, reason and morality, they revel in it. Indeed, those who promote the "newthink" tend to be positively obsessive, to the point of not only forcing it on all others, but doing so violently in many instances.

Just as in 1789 in France, or 1917 in Russia, we would be unwise to be present at the time of a national Final Closeout Sale, as it would unquestionably pose a very real threat to anyone whose prime values remain intact. Worse, in the aftermath, we’d be highly likely to see the emergence of a Robespierre or a Lenin, assuring a coming era of persecution for the retention of prime values.

In any era when socio-political or economic upheaval is soon to occur, those who survive the debacle tend to be those who watch carefully for the warning signs and make changes in their lives and/or geographic locations in the hope of avoiding becoming a casualty.

Those who continue to value truth, reason and morality, and wish to avoid having them replaced by mindless violent chaos, might wish to pointedly be absent from the scene when the Final Blowout Sale gets underway."